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LE L A N D 

SYNCOPATION 



SYNCOPATION 

By 

LELAND 






BOSTON 




THE 


POETRY-DRAMA 
1919 


COMPANY 



^ 

*?** 

■ >« 



Copyright, 19 f 9, by 
The Poetry- Drama Company 



M 1-2 1919 



©CI.A5254 



i 
71 



•**> i 



SYNCOPATION 



SYNCOPATION 

There by the river that first fair day of Spring 
Or in the vague romance of a city night 
Always your face before me. 
What was the night? I remember you, 
The blue of your eyes, 
The wistfulness of your flesh 
Somewhere in the city 
Looking down upon the park 

Moonlight and the monotone of people in the streets 
Or over a cafe table on a Sabbath afternoon; 
August, a secret room beside the sea 
Far off the throb of 'cellos and the lilt of lithe violins 
Cinematic, transitory. . . memories of glamored days, 
Flashes from romanced nights 

Sagan's at Christmas . . . and heard your voice again 
A damask room, lights dim 
And tearing the silks and laces 
That half-concealed your beauty . . . Traffic 
And the drone of plodding men below 
Fools, fools they were, but naught could tell them so . . . 
May-flower road, a car, what was the year? 
Citylight palloring your frail, wanton face 
Your eager flesh that sobbed with quick desire . . . 
A song to Eros ... a dance to Syncopa . • • our 
symphony of life vivacious . . . 

[7] 



Autumn. . . the rush of crowds. . . the caress of color. 

Obbligato to our youth . . . 

I touched your hand, and you swayed 

There is pleasure 

Catch it, snatch it 

Through a snowfall arm in arm 

Don't worry, dear, there is no harm 

Hold me that way, 

Ardente ! 

The vagrant loves are all that live . . . 

Climbing apartment stairs eagerly 

Opening doors into soft, cerise bedrooms 

Lovers of mine 

Breathing their perfume, sensing their lure 

Here we'll be happy . . . the world pauses 

Transient, inconsequent 

Cherishing only the illusions of the here-and-now . . . 

April, a Colonial inn, the town historic, 

Staid in the legends and landmarks of antiquity; 

Why did I first possess you there? 

Pagans of the contemporary in the land of the 

Puritans. 
The ironic verve of it had a thrill to eternally 

dramatize the night, the month, the year 
Flesh and spirit . . . the old hymns yielding to a 

madder syncopation. 
Looking out that night upon the relicted square 
Elthia, beloved. . . beauty at last 
The radiant flower of passion triumphant over the 

fetid garbage of the Puritanage; 

[8] 



Historic, dear? 

Our night of passion made it so . • . 

September again . . . cadenza . . . youth silks by. 

Turnpike, camisole, cafe chartreuse 

Through the park and up the river 

Staccato whispering, your voice all fire and desire. 

Sudden . . . swaying . . . soft buff through pastel pink 

Quick continuity 

Life is so short; can you capture it. 

Furious, curious, insatiate 

Why do you always want to kiss me in public. 

Stop, they're looking. You're darling. You order. 

It's cute here, isn't it. All stucco. 
Now your hand at a matinee 
We hug our secret. 
Here's a Florentine inn 
Sit in this alcove and I'll tell you why the whimsical 

is never art. 
Hush, dear, 

Tis better you're illiterate of all but love; 
The more the pretension, the less the charm. 
Snap out that light and climb in — 
I love that chemise 
As delicate and restiff as your arms; 
Kiss me like that again, 
I'll make an artist of you yet . . . 
Let's take the canoe and paddle down the river; 
Sorbet, nougat and the latest records; and if you're 

good 
Well snug in at Jansen's for a canter and a cognac. 

[9] 



Yes, the river's historic 

But don't throw that bottle overboard 

They've passed laws against it. 

Let's paddle over to the shade and lie in close. 

This day will soon be over. 

There's the 5.26 on the bridge 

The clock watchers' special from the hive of industry, 

As the dailies say. 

You know, Fran, I'd rather be an idler here 

Than the greatest schwab that ever cleaned a Street; 

We'll tarry the carry at Jacot's, and check out. 

I've got the roadster there ... a little whirl to 

Sorncroft. 
Now give me your hand, dear; there's a mirror. 
It'll make a hundred an' ten; five gears forward; 

some bus . . . 
What a pretty town . . . slow down a bit. 
Yes, the white old-Colonial somehow thrills . . . 
A Wayside inn . . . now there's tradition — 
I'd like to take over the place, put a live revue in 

there, 
Get Art to write some sway songs, 
A cute chorus of twelve, three principals, 
And speed the intimate all over the room; 
Open up the taproom, dust out the chambers, 
And stock the buffet with some rare Margaux — 
Wouldn't old Longfellow turn over once or twice; 
Twould be a new thrill anyway, and that's what 

counts . . . 
Spring in Philistia, 

[10] 



Do you remember, Sestra? 
Motoring through the provinces 
Amused at their petty rule of rote 
Sunday evening to a little village church, 
Degage agnostics 

To their great Lord God, the Jesuschrist. 
Your hand in mine as during prayer 
I half -slept and dreamed: 
As if one drab Sabbath 
You had come down the dun-lined aisle 
A radiant flash of orange-rose charmeuse, 
Frailly exotic, naively sensual, 
Slender, silken legs 
Straight to the pulpit 
And suddenly warm, tender arms 
Clasped the startled pastor, 
Your eyes a pagan flame of carnal promise; 
Then quickly your lightly-perfumed lips on his — 
Releasing him with an amused faire debonnaire, 
A pirouette on the platform edge 
Then with a rippling mime step 
Lightly past the pens of the oafish phils and phlegs — • 
A youthful, laughing, romanced vision of beauty, 
Composite anathema of their life entire . . . 
And is it not an easy quest of beauty, 
Merely to love all that the pureswine hate; 
To search out from the slag-heap of their disap- 
proval 
The brilliant jewels of beauty; 
Scrape from them the rusty coatings of their bans, 

["■] 



And see them splendent at last, 

Vividly, intensely beautiful . . . 

Then fling our challenge madly, gladly down 

At ways and days and praise of men; 

Was beauty duty; then laughed their sophistries to 

scorn. < 

Ah, let them mouth their mob moralities 
They could not sense the splendor of a dream; 
Pledge them a smile, cherie, as we pass on 
And leave their laws as trampled dust 
Upon the road of our rebellion . . . 
June evening, and lights of the ships at sea, 
A motor-inn on the Arnton road — 
Could I ever forget your words that night: 
Well, be a genius 
And a hundred years from now, when you're a long 

time dead, 
Some fatandforty matron will enrapture the 

Woman's Club 
Reading jems from your work. 
Was it to bring them a douche of beauty; 
An eternal curtsy to their gods of tin and pewter . . . 
Across the railside cemetery, over the sorden marsh 
And the squant gastanks 
Stood the factories — 
Be a poet, 

There's a pretty garret for you; 
An oak commode in a crumbling attic over a reeking 

delicatessen — 



[12] 



Thank you, but Ambre Evette has a more tangible 

thrill . . . 
Looks like a nice job; 
But I want the body old-rose and the wheels of 

silver- white; 
All right, send me the sketches for approval — 
That line of windshield and cowl; it must be so; 
And don't forget the nine special lights 
And the buffet by the dash . . . 
Swing your hips, beckon, 
Lift your eyes slyly, pirouette; 
You are charming, little ones, 
Vivid virgins of a first blooming — 
Thank your Gods, my dears, for me; 
1 jat I never let tragedy stalk into your romance — 
That the blooming never bore fruit . . . 
Sentimentalist . . . well rather 
I enjoy it ... it thrills me 

Legs always allured me . . . silken . . . seductive 
Then the body . . . the face ... it has to be pretty. 
A trifle degenerate perhaps — 
Yes indeed . . . that thrills me too . . . 
Bohemian in the land of the Puristines, 
Aristocrat to their clown mobility, 
Pagan to their spawning instinct, 
Poet born out of time . . . 
And then when fame came, 
Well, a Swift end to them — 

The dream triumphs 

Cause, custom, curriculum, current event; 

[13] 



Bankers and bakers, preachers and fakirs. 

Here are your bans — I circle them easily, 

Your laws I evade cleverly, 

Your taboos I detour adroitly . . . 

Somewhere they crossed my path 

The senile moralists 

In their everlasting discordance of "Naughty, 

naughty; " 
The empty prints forever stuffed with the tedious 

sobbing of the slob sisters; 
The old-maid mummers of the virtuous, hating the 

beautiful, 
Jealous of life and those who loved; 
Critics female, neuter, epicene ... a cynic smile for 

all of you; 
Your decorous dirges already tire . . . 
The drama of the trivial sublime, 
A slapstick scherzo for the gods: 
Pale pastors from the provinces f rocking by, 
Bramae browsing, purists sniffing, 
Gelid spinsters reading over their teacups, 
A member of the Law-and-Order Committee peering 

into a suspected vintner's — 
Was this the worship of beauty? 
Poets polishing pallid verse in dreary hall-rooms, 
Hucksters yawning over the evening paper, 
Dirty children bawling in street-cars, 
Shoe-buyers herding off to take in a show, 
A side-street preacher in a hell of a fury over Hell, 
A semidemi crying over a blasted life, 

[Ml 



A financier enravished with a red-blood story, 

An art student idylling at the museum, — 

Epic, indeed! 

Twould make a ripping novel for the story-tellers, 

The plodding plothawks, 

The histrionic historians of the commonplace . . • 

I saw him on the train, a 2/8's mind was all he had, 

Reading the investment pages greedily, 

Squinting face and fishy eyes; 

His wife one of those women who make virtue a 

virtue 
And ugliness beauty . . . both of them average and 

there's the comedy . . . 
The musty mould of a small-town Baptist church; 
Rusting tin and rotting wood, 
Rancid carpets and reasty cellars; 
The hollow hokum of the righteous creed, 
The petty pulpiteers forever gibbering the glory of 

God; 
Pious, rut-worn devoutists 
Endlessly shouting their damns and shams . . . 
Out of wind-swept city streets into cosy taverns 

tedesco, 
Perfumed and furred in February, 
And saw her face go white like years that die — 
Or words to that effect . . . 
Sometime, vaguely, 

Whirling down from the mountains with Eralie. 
Through a village quickly, hand to nose; 
Small-town toilers mill-bound Monday morn. 

[15] 



A city and the burring twang of traffic. 

A street, a shop, a workroom, 

The dull, lacklustre eyes of those who rise at six. 

Apricots and prunes. 

Its horrible injustice and all that sort of thing . . . 

And one there was who seemed so like my Lyria; 

Life was so dreary, drab — 

Seduction at least would be eventful. 

It was . . . 

On the Avenue they're putting out a canopy for 

Cordelia, 
She only came out six or seven months ago; 
Her father is the Blank of Blank & Blank-Blank 
With offices and boardroom on the street; 
Tis said their tastes are simple . . . they are . . . 
Go make your pile in your asstigmatic way 
And leave it to your college or your school; 
That's all your life is, all it means to you. 
Here's your reward ... go, take it to your grave, — 
Someday, mayhap, a verdant college calf may scratch 

a match upon your bust . . . 
Afternoon in the public library, 
The great unwashed rag-picking for an education; 
Forever turning the classic pages, 
Inhaling the must and rot of ages . . . 
"And Johnny's doin' awfully well, 
Though he's not as smart as Ned." Do tell! 
M Ned is a better scholar, yes." 
Now isn't that nice; well, I should guess . . . 
And saw them huddled at the grim machines — 

[16] 



Slaves, and so forth ..." God! Was it right! " 

Well, what was right, or was there God. 

The lyric calls — 

Had I time to be dominie and tell Mayme there aint 
none . . . 

And saw the critics dipping pointless pens, 

" Now this is bad, and this is best," 

Each one as futile as the rest . . . 

Spring again: 

Simple squaws shaking blankets from balconies of 
stock-ugly three-deckers, 

Snow melting from french-roofed houses; 

And I still can hear the old man's voice, and see him 

Worn out with family cares and business burdens: 

"What are your intentions, my boy; are they hon- 
orable? " 

And in my heart was sudden cynic pity, 

For already I had taken his daughter . . . 

The sadly stupid, drab and dreary, 

How they weary me; 

A brass-band screaking down the street 

With colors flying; 

The herding instinkt . . . small-towns and sewing 
circles. 

Ladies and the Whitman Club . . . Odd fellahs and 
odder women — 

But never odd, more's the pity — merely people — 

And so it goes; 

They still believed in church 



[17] 



And lifted weary eyes to the long-deferred salva- 
tion . . . 

Into a restaurant at noontime, 

Mothers material watching over prim daughters 
decorous 

With the eyes of the hawk and the face of the lynx. 

Velma Vergen, what a name for a nymph 

Someday . . . soon — 

Well, your debut was charming . . . 

A keener thrill ... a deeper sensing 

Tis all that matters. 

And leave to the metric purists 

The vapid husks of the vicarious — 

Sex is all . . . 

Autumn . . . and leaves falling on the quadrangle 
of the alma material; 

Campus days and all that sort of rot. 

The griping nausea of the stunted minds, 

The tedious tradition of professorial ignorance; 

Who wouldn't sicken there, 

Conning their senescent formulae . . . 

A bold joke in a burlesque show — 

Not enough comedy . . . too many dance specialties, 
and the plot needs bracing. 

Didactic? Sure. Let's go to a movie; 

Sit in and watch them suck the saccharine, 

Swill the syrup, lap the lollipop. 

Life well deserves one happy ending — 

A fade-out to this luscious " art "... 

The kind of man who runs a newspaper, 

[18] 



A clodding stagnentity, prude-souled and puritan- 
idealed, 

A platonic platitude adrift. 

The fabled glory of the press; 

Another merry rabble-gabble mess. 

The mob, and as the leaders read, so runs the 
flock . . . 

And he's a great man in the Town. 

A banker-pillar of the church, 

A face steeped in business ... a whiskered hypo- 
crite. 

He never drops the mask, the pose ... it pays; 

Tell him what an ass he is, and see his guard go 
down . . . 

And passion proletaire: 

Tis Saturday night . . . the moralist a'tingle 

Races home to the breasts of his Agnes, 

Thrice mounts her casually, then falls asleep. 

Evil-minded — where did I hear that word before; 

Who said it? 

Some prude squeaking falsetto from a sewer — 

Clarence, recite! 

Camera . . . the silhouette spectacle flickers for a 
while, then fades 

Ambition always. 

What was the stage? 

I stood there singing 

But I remember only a blur of ecstatic faces 

And a fierce desire to cry at them, " Go home." 

One and all they hailed me master, 

[i9] 



Crowding the dressing-room when the opus ended. 

I heard them buzzing and caught words of: 

" Genius, greatest artist of the age." 

Artist? I denied it . . . how could it be . . . the 

opera an art! 
By the bessemer idols of the republic — No. 
Utterly devoid of power or poignancy, 
The very reason of it all — the theme — 
Shallow, outworn plot pretension; 
The art of mistaken identity, bricabrac scenery and 

mouldy costume plates. 
Where was the master, the librettist, with a theme 

supreme ; 

Then it would be art, and singing beauty 

Another day, another hour, 

A white arc of faces and lentezza violins 

As I betrayed the second-maid to the chupchup of the 

maternal gum-chewers . . . lovers of the drama. 
A blue-and-orange poster on that theatre wall; 
One arm about her waist, the other pressing her 

down, 
Lip-to-lip, her head thrown back in passionate sur- 
render — 
A six-sheet tribute to the lure of love, 
Eye-enticement for the yokelry; 
Ring down this curtain; damn, I should have fixed 

this 'script; 
Why should I have to stay on till the close, and clasp 

this loricated clothes-rack for a curtain. 
Could this be glamor ? 



20 ] 



Night after night, day after day, 

Mouthing these varnished lines; 

The same, inane farrago of words, with that silly 
tag — 

A caramel catering to the canaille. 

Acting of greatness, acting of genius — for these 
Beotians ! 

Ever the artist of words, 

Equally triumphant over the twelvemo pantry- 
enchanters 

And the academic, campus-cultured stalewits. 

Whenever one of these chillpens 

Feels a twinge of doubt as to his importance in 
Letters 

He hastily summons his brothers to conclave, 

And they speedily form a Society, 

Conferring upon themselves 

Celebrity, Supfireminence and Renown; 

The elemental press soberly chronicles the event, 

And the farce fades to bathos. — 

An amused shrug as they pass on to their oblivion . . . 

And I who knew all, probed all, saw all clearly, 

Their petty strivings and my great ideal, — 

Could I cut it to their format 

And slap it out to the 87J4 climacteric critics of the 
periodic press . . . 

Only self counts, 

And that's why your book failed, 

Your poetry, your drama. 

You photograph mediocrity; 

[21] 



I probe self, and triumph — 

That is my supremacy . . . 

Born the lover, and found women utterly atonic; 

Born the poet, and forever heard the multitude re- 
citing the dainty doggerel of the day; 

Born the actor, and saw the theatre barren of art, 
a tawdid thing of real estate . . . 

Here again the emollient sex has given art the leni- 
tive. 

The torpid, turgid tribe 

Cramming the presses and galleries 

With their gargoyled grotesques, their drooping imi- 
tations, 

Their self-confessed ignorances of life and beauty . . . 

Women who talk of the passion grande, 

Failing and paling to futility . . . 

Lover supreme when no women loved, 

Sensualist ever to their lyric lure; 

Seeking the epic — and finding only doggerel. 

From brothel to boudoir, 

Making the descent easily, 

And all I captured was an eager imperfection. 

Sad eyes pleading wistfully, hopeful and hesitant, 

And no Pierrette for Pierrot . . . well, a smile for that; 

They all run nicely to form — and on schedule — 

Another'll be along in a minute. 

Bold cues from Avenue cuties, 

Veiled, awkward looks from matrons over teacups, — 

Was this the cost of being beautiful? 

Or was it . . . well, here is the drab composite: 

[22] 



An actress, famous as it were, 

But she couldn't act ... I learned that soon. 

She was one of those women 

Who make capital of the burnejones parable for the 

long-eared garishtocracy; 
About her an exoticism of the East — side, 
With a crafty, Semitic talent for business; 
And she took a good photograph — 
But a lover! Boutade bathetique! 
Her cheapness sickened ... a sublimated shopgirl 
With the heredity of the lowest peasantry. 
She pecked her kisses parrot-like; 
Impassioned she made delicious, gurgling sounds, 
Prattling about the wonder of it all; 
And to this day she wonders why I fled from 

her 

A notorable woman writer, 

Supposed to be sensational in amour. 

You read her trush between covers; they blurb it out 

by the yard. 
A half- thought that perhaps she'd be intense; 
She seemed to have sophistication. 
Well, she utterly lacked passion; 
Loved like a collegegirl sparked or a flapper frivved. 
I still shudder at the way she had 
Of clutching me by the lapel, and simping, 
"Kiss me, darling," her mouth puckered like an 

ingenue's . . . 
Quick conquest, swifter boredom. 
Kiss an' tell . . . hell 

[23] 



A painter — by grace of a dictionary, 

Smugging her stupid question 

One night in her gairish studio, 

" Possession or desire, which is most beautiful? " 

The clinquant dilettante trembling in my arms. 

Why couldn't I have taken her grotesquery for a warning 

Before I pushed her over — 

She was as passive as a verb. 

And so it goes — 

Aesthete, harlot, goodwife, duchess; 

An absolutist ever, 

Had I patience to be forever guiding them past the 

trivial. 
Another . . . the fatras press dubbed her 
" The famous society leader." 
She had one foot in a blast-furnace, 
The other in a peerage, 
And lacked the wit to know there was nothing 

between them. 
Her monosyllabled idea of the scheme of things 

might have been lisped by a debutante. 
She thought Indian music and baseball adorable, 
Europe a synonym for art, 
The world created for optimists, 
And all the other stock puerilities of the provinces. 
I suppose she even thought me a brute when I left 

her. 
Well, I was a snob and proud of it; a brusq in a world 

of bores . . . 
March, mud and manhattan; 

[24] 



The vivid poetry of industry, 

The mighty dreamers of commerce — 

Juvenal, fox-trot! 

Selfmade illiterates crowding the prints, too doltish 
to know the joke's on them. 

Drygoods aristocrat, toady and sucker, 

Drop-shop patrician, proletarian, mucker, — 

When they think, they stink. 

Always the delicacy of Jasmin or Muguet, 

The subtle essences that served another purpose 
besides the sensual — 

Less beautiful, but vastly more utilitarian — 

Forever to keep the stench of their atrophy from 
contracting my nostrils . . . 

Downtown that roaring travesty they call Big 
Business, 

And wonder why a poet cannot write it down; 

Could they but know, 

So great is the grime and slime of it, 

Tis all a poet could do to live it down. 

Madrigals to machinery, sonnets to soap, 

Lyrics to textiles, teething- rings and tungsten! 

An endless vomit of system . . . 

Genius in a land of technicians, 

Ego in a perpetual rigmarole of science — 

Company, corporation, factory, shop, 

Whistled my fingers at its cheap pretension . . . 

" And this book of yours ; 

Somehow it's pitched too high; too rosy; too ro- 
mantic." 

[*5] 



Well, did I dip my pen for fools, 

The feeble statusquo of age. 

Romantic, to be sure . . . and always so, 

As long as the intensity of youth makes art supreme. 

My life both lyric and epic, 

And I pen it as I please . . . 

Could satire melt the filthy film of your aggregated 

ignorance, 
Or irony drive a wedge of wisdom into your gaping, 

babbling mouths, — 
The pen trembles before the task. 
The din of the rabble swarming along, 
There was your romance, and there was your 

song . . . 
People, people, people, 
Come, let me put you in the book, 
The lithe libretto of my life; 
Stand in your place, and take the lines I give you; 
Wear the fool's cap, mouth the dummy's part, 
I direct; you play the mummy's part: 
Mildewed critics and altered professors 
Flimsily propaganding the angloenglish conventional; 
Poets, male and feeble, eternally praising each other; 
Women who write dainty, decorous lyrics to love — 
Poor dears who've never known a passion; 
Adjective poets, polishing, prefacing, diagramming, 
Copying, classifying, annotating, 
Culting their sick criticism, 
Herding their pale classicism. 
Was life to be taken up listlessly by lumpish artisans, 

[26] 



Hamstrung with trochees, 

And castrated with iambic pentameters! 

One side, finikins, 

Perfection does not lie that way. 

Stiflers of emotion, suppressors of self — 

It was as well; you never had a thing to tell. 

And I rode over you ... a deep smile for your 
inanity . . . 

People, people, people, 

I bury you here . . . tis your only monument: 

Small-talk women with eyes forever on the main 
chance, 

Ex-preachers newly-converted to ways of liberality, 

Blackneck socialists and putty-faced bohemians pass- 
ing proclamations over rotten red ink, 

Editors and critics who grew up with the soil, and are 
still dirty, 

Rubberstamps of the counting-room, 

Pack-horses mired . . . prize students still menarchic, 

Academic asses that weep at a thought of their alma 
maternity, 

Red-blooded He-men awkward about teawagons — 

Metropolitan as a magazine, 

Men who praise women as artists and think politics 
a noble calling . . . 

Radical academists . . . professional women, 

Whole-souled democrats, 

Compilers of anthologies — the cataloguers of medi- 
ocrity, 

Women who lecture on the Higher Mysticism, 

[*7.1 



Women who lecture, 

Women, 

Little reviewers, new republicans, 

Juvenile publishers of menopatisic school-teachers, 

Neverclever critics, 

Actresses who haunt the boards and memory with 
atrocious puppeting, 

Husbands, wives, 

Wives, husbands, 

Maids who have slipped by Spring's awakening, 

Young composers, violinists, pianists — earnest vir- 
tuosi in the continent convention, 

Indian poetasters, Hispanic hoofers — latest discharge 
from polyglot privies, 

Maggoty maidens co-relating the obvious in anaemic 
ochre, 

Best-cellar illiterati recreating literature, 

And pale-stale poets who deify vegetation, — 

An ever-ridiculous pageant of blustering inferior- 
ity .. . 

Mechanic, pedagogue, housewife and clerk, 

Write a jingle about them and see how they perk . . . 

Horribly married . . . marriage . . . the word sickens. 

Upon it is based their drama, literature and song — 

And so tedium . . . 

Crowds, crowds, where is the thrill? 

As poignant as a time-table or a bill-of-fare . . . 

There is a city: 

They call it New York, and often say with grotesque 
pride that it is the biggest thing of its kind. 

[28] 



It is ... I wont dispute — 

The thing is ugliness; 

There in that rotspot of the world 

All the loutish ragtag of the republics 

Have congregated to consecrate the Philistine tradi- 
tion . . . 

The charming intensity of the common people, 

Another sickly shimmy of the democratic creed, — 

This Sue or Sadie married, this Jake or John in 
trade — 

There is their literature; 

Primeval primprudes yelping at the erotic — 

There is their criticism. 

Bathetic socialists forever at their silly code; 

I mourn for them, and so do their nails. 

Let's hope that in the millennuim there'll be towels 
and soap for every Thomas and Richard . . . 

And Bohemia — 

There too, absolute evidence of the rule of the com- 
mercial propieties, 

Reflecting all the stalely-wicked virtues of the rustic 
provincial . . . 

Women artists! 

Well, there is a magazine, there is a book, 

There is a theatre, there is a gallery — 

I ask you, Sestra, are they art? 

Women novelists heaving huge obviosities wickedly, 

Women poets and painters chopping out lines as 
passionate as pastry. 

Married vestals who jingle chastely, 

[29] 



And prolipic critics who praise them. 
Women in art! God save the smirk! 
Bring them up to their indictment . . . the verdict 

stands — 
Back to your knitting and your slops; 

I tire of you 

Sob fiddle, mute cornet, bang banjo — 

Mill-town, swill-town, 

Academists crowding the gutter 

Billboard, trolley-car, 

Wops and cattle herding, 

Opera House, livery stable, 

Star-Spangled Britannia God Bless Our Home 

America I Love You 

Jazz 

This was the land and the people, Caressa, 

This was the year, and the place 

Of our love. 

Drab days and futile hours, 

And would our love, then, prove as uneventful, 

Reading that night the everlasting question in your 

eyes . . . 
Moonlight over the city, 

Snatches of syncopation vivace across the park, 
And passion sang the answer in your last caress. 
What of that essay on the ethics of the flesh — 
When you're older . . . put it away now . . . 
Live it . . . 

Adorable, I do love you 
Even the way I sing love . . . what more? 

[30] 



Let down your hair . . . let's live a poem 

Hold me that way, dear, your lips yield a triolet. 

Beauty through beauty to beauty again. 

What of your fame? 

Fame in my own way, the lone way, 

Expatriat ever from the blight of this land . . . 

Somewhere hand-in-hand ... in the car . . . 

An open road . . . and lilacs for Spring . . . 

Down at the sweep of the valley, and the river's sil- 
ver-blue ... we would make town by dusk . . . 

Let's have dinner in our room 

And watch the carmine evening loiter in. 

You're clever . . . Lilas was the one essence for to- 
night. 

Come closer, dear . . . this is our night for love — 

Tomorrow we will be in Enfield 

Madness of May . . . not long ago . . . 

Wild roses sensuate across the dunes of Charldon — 

What was it that came, unbidden, to our love . . . 

A new thrill when I had sated them all . . . 

Starlight over the sands and the blue singing, 
singing . . . 

Was I not god . . . You granted it, my own . . . 

Kiss me again . . nations babble their way to oblivion . . 

This people has long outlived its epoch 

Gladness of May . . . well, this much supreme . . . 

I was a god, and they could not stone me . . . 

A god, turning your body to flame 

And your warm, wan face to scarlet . . . 



[31] 



Chill of your lips in passion ... I drain them 

again 

Sadness of May . . . another Spring . . . 

And ever the soft pathos that is you sorrowing each 

hour . . . 
Somewhere . . slumbering gardens . . subtly scented . . 
A waltz half-heard . . . and here 
The blare, the flare, cymbalic of this land . . . 
Again and again you came . . . and were gone . . . 
The soft intangible . . . the ever-sought . . . the 

never-found, 
Tempting me from disillusion to a new despair . . . 
Why did you always call me with music and color 

and magic of words . . . 
I remember, but I soon forget . . . 
Song for my singing, color for my painting, words 

that I played upon . . . 
Artist supreme . . . well, You granted it — my 

immortality . . . 
Quick fever of Spring, and in my heart a cynic hate 
Of every God-damned thing these pureswine ven- 
erate . . . 
Sometime a brass-band played, and you stood in the 

throng, marveling . . . 
Peanuts and popcorn . . . and your mother had never 

told you 

Looking down upon the poppies of the park ... a 

room cerise . . . 
Syncopation for possession 
And never a doctor for denouement 

[32] 



Caresses pass, and now only memories — 

You that promised so much . . . 

And someday he will come . . . genius indeed . . . 

Eternally lingering between the lure and the laze • • . 

And what the hell has phantasy to do with poetry 

When art is ever self expression . . . 

And hours pass, and days pass, and months, and years . . . 

Give me your lips again . . . there was the song . . . 

What was the year, 

And whose were the hands softly, softly about me . . . 

Was it you, Senestra? 

There had been a time, you remember . . . 

Apartment stairs and lilacs . . . 

Eager idealists in a world of grooven fools . . . 

Pathos for the conflict . . . 

Well, it had all passed . . . another day . . . another 

way . . . 
Triumph 



[33] 



